Academy of Learning College

Case Studies

I spend my career looking for companies and professionals of the highest standard, and when I find them, I never leave. Higher Education Marketing is one such organization. HEM demonstrates on a continual basis that they are absolute experts in their field. I would fully recommend them to anyone.

Heidi Collins

Director, Marketing and Sales

Academy of Learning College

WEBSITE REDESIGN, CMS MIGRATION AND LEAD GENERATION OPTIMIZATION

An aging website and the rising cost of student leads were having a negative impact on Academy of Learning College’s (AOLC) ability to acquire new students. These increasing costs and online competition from other career colleges encouraged the college to consider new approaches to update and improve their online marketing.

the challenge:

THE WEBSITE HAD BECOME DATED

The site needed to be updated in many ways, including improvement of the overall site architecture, general look and feel, revision of older content, and it was felt that significant improvements could be made to optimize for lead generation. Also paramount was the requirement to migrate to a new site without losing any of its current visitor traffic levels.

IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO EFFECTIVELY INTEGRATE THE SITE INTO NEWMARKETING INITIATIVES

The older site was not built on a modern content management system, making it difficult to update, reorganize, or expand the content without costly external web development support. Marketing management wanted to shift the site over to a more nimble, easily updateable platform, like WordPress, that would allow staff to directly update, manage the content of the site, and integrate that content more easily with ongoing marketing initiatives.

A MOBILE WEBSITE WAS REQUIRED

Visitor traffic to the website from mobile smartphones and tablets had increased significantly in the past year to over 10%. A mobile site solution was required to meet the needs of this increasing number of prospective and enrolled students.

A NEED TO LOWER THE COST OF SITE-GENERATED LEADS

Managers identified they needed to increase the visit-to-lead conversion rate

HEM designed the new website, with a priority placed on improved, more streamlined architecture and a less distracting design to provide a better visitor experience.

The site was designed with more direct conversion paths and conversion events to more effectively move prospects to the content pages they were seeking.Dedicated landing pages were developed for various visitor segments and campaigns, providing a much more customized content response with resulting increases in conversion rate. Architecture, design, content and calls to action on content pages were also optimized for lead conversion.

The site content was migrated to the new design in WordPress content management system to facilitate on-going content development, maintenance and marketing integration

A mobile website, which included all major content areas was developed and launched in parallel with the desktop version.

Results:

Higher Education Marketing’s work with AOLC on their website resulted in thefollowing outcomes:

Implementation of the new website took place on schedule, in October 2012.The site was successfully migrated with no loss of SEO ranking or student lead generation.
By November 2012, as measured in Google Analytics, there were a number ofvery positive increases in key site metrics, including:

56% increase in leads

66% increase in conversion rate

20% decrease in overall bounce rate

50% net increase in mobile traffic upon the launch of the mobile site

ABOUT ACADEMY OF LEARNING COLLEGE

Academy of Learning College is an international education organization with campuses in eight Canadian provinces and the Northwest Territories. It is one of the largest private career colleges in Canada, with over 30 diploma programs, aimed at the adult learner. Academy of Learning College offers a wide variety of part-time, full-time and distance education study options, including Administrative Assistant and Web Design courses, as well as more in-depth career programs, such as Business, Healthcare, and IT Technician training programs.